What is Technology Doing to Us? A Conversation with Tristan Harris

by Ezra Buckley on April 22, 2017

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the arms race for human attention, the ethics of persuasion, the consequences of having an ad-based economy, the dynamics of regret, and other topics.

Tristan Harris has been called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” by The Atlantic magazine. He was the Design Ethicist at Google and left the company to lead Time Well Spent, where he focuses on how better incentives and design practices can create a world that helps us spend our time well. Harris’s work has been featured on 60 Minutes and the PBS NewsHour, and in many journals, websites, and conferences, including: The Atlantic, ReCode, TED, the Economist, Wired, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the New York Review of Books. He was rated #16 in Inc Magazine’s “Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30” in 2009 and holds several patents from his work at Apple, Wikia, Apture and Google. Harris graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science.